


Property Damage

by EmotionalRobots



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Blink And You Miss It Slash, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Fixing the Human Characters, Gen, OP is not the same after "Orion Pax", Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s02e01-03 Orion Pax, Rogue Starscream, Set during s02e04, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22272850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmotionalRobots/pseuds/EmotionalRobots
Summary: After the retrieval of the Spark Extractor, the Autobots are on the hunt for more Iacon relics. They aren't the only ones, however, and a misunderstanding leads to a standoff, which leads to a hole in a wall, and everything spirals out of control from there.Or:The Autobots do their best, and also some demolition, but hey, sometimes? That's life.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	1. Late Night

**Author's Note:**

> To make a long story short, I've been sitting on this idea for over five years now. I adore TFP with every fiber of my being, but i really, really wanted the human characters to be used a little better. A couple of tiny ideas, started to to snowball, and somehow created this absolute giant of a fic.  
> So, without further ado, please enjoy ! :)

Certain Things, when they happen, can be traced down to a single event. They have certain odds, or certain people working in their favor, to _make_ a certain Something happen.

Other Things are not like that at all. Other Things cannot be traced back to a single reason, a person or a cause. They are a cloud of coincidences, a complete fluke, a _glitch in the matrix_ that someway, somehow, _allows_ that Something to occur against all odds.

Optimus Prime’s recent bout of amnesia has left him philosophizing in his pre-recharge. There have been many things he’s seen in his eons of life that have been hard to reconcile. The fact that _he_ , sans-Matrix, would knowingly and willingly aid the Decepticon cause is _very_ hard to wrap his processor around. Certainly, in his spark he knows that Megatron would never have been _entirely_ truthful with his intentions for Project Iacon – deception is his nature, after all – but still, guilt steals the breath from his vents. He gave his enemy incredibly valuable information, but now he knew so very little of what that entailed.

With an un-Primely huff of frustration, Optimus shifts to lie on his side on the berth. While the Matrix’s influence had clearly returned, small gaps have appeared in the cool suppression of his emotions it normally exudes. It’s small, but the change is startling all the same. He found himself getting irritated with their antiquating technology yesterday, and this past evening he found it hard to stifle a chuckle while watching the children interact with Bumblebee and Bulkhead. It’s… strange. As if the façade of the matrix, of the title of Prime, has been chipped away ever-so-slightly, allowing just the tiniest sliver of Orion Pax to flicker through. If he were fully honest with himself, he liked the ability to express more emotion. His determination was unchanged, but now he could also convey his desperation. His humor. His frustration.

His Guilt. Orion’s Guilt.

Orion-

 **No.** _Optimus_ jumps slightly as his commlink chirps in his audial, and nearly breathes a sigh of relief when he finds the ping is one summoning him to the main hangar. It isn’t often he wishes for distractions. But tonight, he’s nearly grateful to abandon his quarters and his dwindling few cycles of rest.

The lights are dimmed in the main Silo when Optimus strides into the room, a reflection of the star-dusted sky outside the bunker walls. Over by the console, Ratchet alternates between feeding commands into the keypad and checking his work on the monitor. As he watches the medic all but hop back and forth, a smile plays across Optimus’ faceplates.

“Ratchet.” He rumbles, alerting the mech to his presence. Ratchet freezes mid-hop back to the main monitor and turns around. His optics are filled with a fiery, urgent optimism, likely fueled by yesterday’s acquisition of the Spark Extractor.

“Optimus,” The medic greets him brightly. He hesitates, fixing the Prime with a rare smile before continuing. “Another Iacon signal was activated five minutes ago. It was slightly corrupted, but I’ve managed to pin down a general area.” Ratchet whirls back around, gesturing to a blip on a map framed in the left-hand monitor. “Not _too_ far, ah…“ A graze of the keypad, and the map shifts to cover both monitors, larger and in more detail. “Hm. _West Virginia._ It’s still on this continent.” The mech turns back around and jabs a digit at the blip, now bearing the label _‘Pendleton, West Virginia.’_

“If it takes as long as we think for the Decepticons to un-scramble the signal encryption, we _should_ beat them there if we hurry.” Ratchet explains as he peers around Optimus’ form. Metallic shuffling precedes their teammates into the room. The only one who looks remotely awake is Bumblebee. The scout trills a downright chipper ‘Good morning!’ to his superiors in Minicon shorthand.

“Well done, Ratchet.” The Prime commends him, tilting his head slightly as he studies the situation.

“Why are we looking at West Virginia?” Arcee grumbles sleepily. Beside her resonates a barely audible rumble of a snore and she jabs an elbow into Bulkhead’s side, the wrecker having seemingly dozed off on his pedes. He starts awake, trying very hard to look like he had been paying attention the entire time.

“A second Iacon homing beacon has been located.” Optimus relays. He turns to face the three, determination shining in his optics. “We will depart shortly to retrieve the item attached to it.”

“Woah, all of us?” Arcee questions, crossing her arms and straightening to appear more awake. “What if another one pops up while we’re gone?” It was a thinly veiled plea to be released back to her quarters, but Bulkhead nods emphatically in support, nonetheless.

“You have a point,” Optimus rumbles, putting a servo to his chin as he decides on a solution. “Bulkhead, Arcee and myself will stay back, should the need arise to be in two places at once.” Arcee visibly relaxes with a mumbled “thank you” as Bumblebee starts to bounce on his heels in anticipation,

“Come on,” Ratchet rolls his eyes with a fond sigh as he passes the scout. “Let’s get going.” As they make their way to the groundbridge, he hears what sounds like a startled yip Bulkhead pokes a drifting Arcee back upright.

[]

The sun casts a warm alpenglow on the Blue Ridge mountains as it begins to rise. Inside of a lab at the bottom of a hill, a gaggle of scientists has been working through the night on a new high-frequency transmitter. While the majority of the researchers present are matched one-to-one to a computer, a group of four are gathered at the back of the room. Ezra Greene scratches at his chin as he looks at a data set from the evening’s system test.

“And this is the entirety of the transmission?” He asks, raising an eyebrow to the intern at the console. In front of the computer, a woman pushes curly brown hair from her face to meet his eyes.

“Yessir.” She nods emphatically, gesturing to the window labeled ‘test 68-1A.’ Where the rest of the curve around it is smooth, the selected portion is jagged. “The anomaly begins at around two hours into the test, and ends ten minutes after.” She crosses her arms as Dr. Greene leans in to inspect the screen. “…and shouldn’t be there at all. We’re in a Radio Quiet Zone.” She concludes.

“Nothing like this was observed in any of the other tests. Did the other equipment pick it up?” The brunette shakes her head and Dr. Greene hums in puzzlement, gaze laser-focused on the monitor as if willing the blip to spill it’s secrets. The anomalous signal stares him right back, stoic and silent as the mountains around them. “This is intriguing, to say the least.”

“It’s probably just feedback.” A redheaded man shrugs, leaning back in his office chair. “I tried to tell you that the shielding was crooked.”

“Nobody touched it from the last test though!” A blonde woman counters, pushing herself away from her desk. “What, do you think it got _magically_ pushed over somehow?”

“Ugh, _whatever._ ” He hisses as he shoves a notebook into his bag, “I’ll think about it later. My brain’s melted enough for one day.”

“Aw, is the night shift too much for you? You tapping out?” The brunette jokes, spinning her chair around to smirk at him. He chuckles as he slings the satchel over one shoulder.

“Only ‘cause we were supposed to leave an hour ago.”

“ _Shoot,_ really?!” She scrambles in her pocket for her watch, cursing under her breath at the time as she returns it to its proper place on her wrist. “I gotta go. _Shit, yeah,_ I gotta go.” The brunette gathers her belongings hurriedly, shoving them in a well-worn backpack. She snatches her flash drive from the machine and shoves it into the pocket of a thin windbreaker before shrugging it on. “Have a good evening, everyone! Goodbye Professor Greene!” Her tone is clipped as she rushes from the room. The door closes behind her with a rush of air and a metallic _khh-chunk_. The professor turns to the remaining two interns with a questioning look.

“Well, I guess today’s the day!” The blonde giggles quietly in the hush left behind by the brunette. “You’d think she’d be less excited with all those siblings!”

“Aww, c’mon Carly,” Redhead teases as he hands over her pencil bag. “Wouldn’t you be excited to be an aunt?”

[]

Shit. Okay, _stay calm, move fast_.

The curly-haired woman sprints through the exit of the old warehouse containing the lab. The sun is starting to reach past the mountains, bathing the tips of the trees in the golden first light of the day.

She tugs a key from her pocket at some point between the door and the end of the walkway, roughly jamming it into a bike lock. It opens with a satisfying shift of metal. Pulling the chain from an old road bike, she slings her backpack fully onto both shoulders and peels out of the small parking area.

 _She needed to get home._ The commute isn’t far. Working at night in the tiny town meant that there’s almost never anyone on the road this early in the morning. She makes record time in getting there, cutting behind a long-abandoned grocery store and slipping onto the trails. It takes only a few minutes to come upon a run-down looking cabin on the outskirts of Pendleton.

 _Stop._ Kickstand. Keys. Unlock-enter-lock. The woman barely has time to catch her breath in the entryway before the corded phone in the kitchen rings. She dives to answer it, greeting the caller warmly.

“ _Finally!”_ the voice on the other end of the line is masculine and melodic. ” _Evil twin_ , I’ve been calling _forever._ ”

“Sorry, sorry!” The woman huffs a breathy laugh into the receiver. Tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder for a moment, she lugs over a bar stool to sit on before leaning over the laminate island. ”All part of my _evil plan._ How are they?”

“Becca’s good!” the man affirms. “I’d hand you over, but she just fell asleep. Baby’s _great._ It’s a girl! Becc named her Cornflower, ‘Flower for short. She’s _adorable._ Totally has Liam’s eyes.” He chuckles softly, and a crackle of static ripples through the connection “ _Cornflower._ It’s the best she could come up with, Kath. She’s gotta get it from Ma, they’ll get worse every time, I swear!”

“I dunno,” the woman, Kath, smirks. “would she be one of us if she _didn’t_ have a weird name?”

“ _Your_ name is normal, _Katherine._ So is mine!”

“Uh, no, _Leon_ is not a normal name.”

“I’m named after granddad!”

“Granddad was named Leonard, not _Leonidas.”_

“Okay, okay, fair!” Leon laughs heartily on the other end of the line, and Katherine smiles. “ _God,_ I miss you…” he mutters.

“Yeah, me too.” Katherine admits with a sigh. “It’s only six more months, though. I’ll come back home, get that big ol’ _bonus_ , we can finish fixing up the house…” she trails off, staring dreamily at a far-away point, her mind not quite inside of the little kitchen anymore.

“Yeah! That’ll be- ROSS, no! Micah, put- I gotta go, the _real_ evil twins are at it again- MICAH I SWEAR-” Katherine laughs at the commotion on the other end.

“Okay! Say hi to the boys for me!” she shouts into the receiver over the ruckus. “Love you, Lee!”

“Love you, too- GET OFFA’ THE-“

The line goes silent with a cartoonish clatter and crash on the other end, and Katherine hangs up the phone with a bittersweet ache in her chest. It was only for a few months. Stay just a few months, participate in the research opportunity of a lifetime, and then get to go home to her family again. As the adrenaline leaves her body, she finds herself drained as she shuffles back to the door to kick off her shoes. Then, still clad in her socks with the thin windbreaker over her lab coat, Katherine climbs the stairs to the bedroom, drops her bag and sags into her desk chair with a put-upon sigh.

It was more of a loft than a room, really. In the fresh light of the day, she allows herself to take stock of her surroundings. The ‘home’ she’d settled on for her stay was a shabby old cabin on the outskirts of Pendleton proper. In her eyes, it was perfect – the outskirts of town were hardly a twenty-minute bike ride from the research center. It was quiet and secluded like she was used to, and just barely within her price range. It had power, water. and internet access, and every penny saved was one more that Katherine could take with her when she went back home to her family.

 _Her ever-growing family._ What a day. She was an aunt now. An aunt with entirely too much work to do, unfortunately. Katherine boots her laptop and plugs in the flash drive to load a copy of the signal anomaly. It could warm up and render the data while she slipped downstairs to nab a cup of coffee.


	2. Early Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some questions are asked, our scouting party goes on a morning walk, and Starscream is Starscream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, it has been a bit. I'm sorry for disappearing off the radar! My health hasn't been the best and that's taken precedent over my creative work recently, but from here on out there shouldn't be any further disruptions. You can find my other TF-related, sometimes x-reader-y works over at uwuprime.tumblr.com. Come drop me a line! ^^
> 
> And now, back to the words "West Virginia, mountain mama" repeating over and over again in the back of my mind, just as it has been the entire time I spent writing this chapter.

The sun is still lazily climbing when the groundbridge swirls to life in the middle of a forest clearing. They can’t bridge directly into town and risk being seen, but Bumblebee takes delight in the detour as he strides into the crisp mountain air. The trees are already turning vibrant shades of red and gold in this part of the country, and the dew on the leaves catches the sunrise and makes them shimmer. Even Ratchet seems to take note, stepping through the bridge and taking a deep in-vent as the morning chill rolls over him. He spends less time looking at the trees, though, instead choosing to calibrate his gear while Bumblebee ogles the landscape curiously.

“Come on, now.” The medic grumbles at the scanner in his servos. The mangled gadget has clearly outlived its intended lifespan by several decades, if not a century or two. It probably won’t help matters to whack the side of it roughly, but he does anyway.

_.:Something wrong?:._ the noise draws the scout back from the scenery, thoughtful optics cycling as they zero in on the ancient device. Ratchet huffs, opting now to change tactics and shake the poor piece of tech.

“Pit-Spawned little- _there we go_.” The scanner gives a garbled chirp as it stutters to life again, the word ‘ ** _routing_** _’_ appearing on the screen in bold Neocybex. “Just a glitch. Let’s see…” A topographic map loads itself piece-by-piece onto the handheld, starting with the clearing around them. Slowly, the image fills in, each pass of the scanner yielding another ring of detail around the last. The clearing comes into focus on the screen, then the trees, then the cliff face at their backs and the town a few miles away. Then, finally, “There. Twenty miles to the north.” Ratchet points to a small blinking icon nestled into the next ring as it comes into view.

_.:We can follow that stream.:._ Bumblebee says, nodding at a spot where the bank meets the clearing. On the map, it winds its way almost exactly past their target _. .:We’ll stay out of sight that way.:._ The medic hums in agreement. 

“We’ll have to move on foot, though.” Ratchet states, following as the scout heads into the woods. “The last thing we need is Agent Fowler lecturing us about national forests. _Again._ ”

[]

By the time Katherine returns to the loft, coffee-in-hand, the computer has finished piecing the data together on-screen. Just as it was at the lab, the test results are still marred by a jagged burst of interference partway through the capture. She sets down her mug next to the laptop before finally slipping off her windbreaker and lab coat, tossing them both onto the end of the bed to be dealt with later.

Katherine drops into the desk chair, opting to tuck her legs beneath her on the seat before drawing her cup of heavenly bean-juice closer, letting the warmth take root where her excitement is beginning to ebb. The day has already been long and eventful enough, between taking another late shift and waiting to hear about her very first niece.

Her work was a conundrum to be sure. The research team had started to test the receiver over three months ago now, and the values transmitted were always correct, even if not all of them were captured. She takes a sip of coffee with one hand and queues the program to simulate the signal moving through the receiver with the other. She had to have missed something. If the anomaly didn’t come from the transmitter itself, and also didn’t come from the receiver, surely there has to be something wrong with the system as a whole? But that couldn’t be right, either, because an error this large would have shown up before, when they first tested the hardware...

Katherine sighs tiredly, resting an elbow on the scuffed tabletop to prop her chin in her palm. She can rest when she figures it out, she decides. It’s better to break the logic-loop of possible solutions than see them in her dreams over and over again. Besides, what if the phone rings again? She takes a deeper drink, unphased by the settling layer of rogue coffee grounds that the cheap filter let through into her morning brew. Caffeine is Caffeine, after all.

[]

Somewhere in Kentucky, there’s a hole in the ground. It would appear rough enough to be the opening from an old sinkhole, if not for the almost squared-off edge to one corner, and the metallic shimmer to the scrapes left near the chasm’s edge.

Starscream, coated liberally in dirt, attempts to shake the dust off as he finishes tunneling his way back into the front half of the _Harbinger_. The semi-permanent entrance he’s making for himself is large enough to be seen overhead, so he’ll need to get back to work shortly to camouflage the area. Having successfully escaped the _Nemesis_ with enough spoils to fuel himself and the half-ship for a not-insignificant length of time, he’d never forgive himself if he were to be discovered only mere days after his rather daring heist. He wasn’t really intending to take a break at all. The console at the helm of the broken ship had started wailing in alarm, and he’d come inside to turn the fragging thing off. It was scaring off his natural cover of birdsong and animal tracks.

He thanks the stars that he did. On the screen is sensor data covering several hundred miles. Many sectors are corrupted, but less than three hundred miles to the east is a clear Groundbridge signal. It’s only active for a few moments before disappearing, but the fact it was unmarked makes it obvious that the Decepticons aren’t the ones in that area. What were the Autobots looking for?

Starscream’s talons click as they strike the console keys, wings fluttering curiously as he weighs his options. He’d much rather take on the Autobots than his own ex-faction, a purely tactical opinion based purely on his obvious advantages, and definitely _not_ on his odds of survival. Besides, the Autobots don’t come out of hiding if there isn’t something of _value_ to be gained. He could only come up with two options.

Most likely, there was energon in the area, and one of them was going to retrieve it. It probably wasn’t much to them, but to Starscream? An amount of any value to Team Prime would be doubly so for him. It would last him five times as long as it would them, being so efficient of a Seeker as he is, and his reclaimed segment of the _Harbinger_ uses a negligible amount of energon. This could be his chance to stock up and have _several months’_ worth of rations on hand.

But then there was the other possibility: there was no energon, and this has something to do with Optimus Prime and the Iacon Archive. That could mean anything. Iacon’s vault contained an enormous variety of items, from cultural relics to weapons of mass destruction to records from every Prime and Senator to ever serve, everywhere on Cybertron. If something from Iacon _made it_ to Earth, however unlikely, it could be _very_ _lucrative_ for Starscream.

Either energon or ancient, powerful artifacts. Starscream narrows his optics as he copies the location to his internal navigation system. No matter what it turns out to be, _Starscream wants it._ He makes a beeline for the ‘door,’ taking a moment or two to throw some branches over the hole in the ground before he departs. It’s not the best disguise, but anyone passing by would be unlikely to take the time to look too closely, anyway. With a jump and a twist mid-air, Starscream takes to his jet mode and rockets upward, banking in the direction of the signal. This would be _fun._

[]

“We’re close.” Ratchet mutters as they creep through the woods. The fallen leaves make muted crunching noises as he and Bumblebee weave a path through the trees, following the creek on their right. The sound of trickling water is drowned out by the insistent chirr and beep of the scanner, signaling their arrival at it’s closest estimate of the origin of the signal.

Ahead of them lies a clearing. The leaves have been raked and pushed into neat little piles at the edge of the open area. Near the piles is a worn-down bike laying sideways on the ground, chain lock tangled through the handlebars and frame, but not secured to anything else. There’s a well-kept fire pit, a stack of logs, and a small cluster of camp chairs at the far end of the space. _Definitely inhabited._

Near the center is a cabin. The roof and paneling are worn down, and the wall facing them is sun-bleached and weathered. A light is on in the window just below the apex of the roof, but the two on the lower floor are dark. There’s no car in the gravel pullout from the road leading back off the ridge and into town _. Possibly uninhabited?_ The Autobots remain still for a tense few moments, but there’s no movement from within the old house.

_.:Do you see it?:._ Bumblebee trills quietly, cocking his helm to one side as his optics roam what little he can see through the windows of the old house.

“It might be inside…” the medic murmurs, tapping the side of the scanner impatiently, urging it to offer him a more specific location. Finally fed up with the ancient device, he subspaces it and uses his wrist-mounted one instead. He opens his integrated tracker, and the gadget parses the next one hundred feet around him in an instant. Bumblebee’s vitals appear a few feet from him, along with his own in the very center. The closest edge of the cabin comes into focus. Just inside the structure, the signal is strong. Still corrupted, but very clearly coming from just within the building. “Yes, inside. Along the wall facing us.”

_.:I can get it.:._ Bee offers, peeking out from the tree line slightly to get a better look. _.:If I reach through that window I could-:._

_“Hold!”_ Ratchet snaps as the roar of a jet disturbs the quiet of the clearing. Bumblebee ducks back into the trees, hoping that the bright yellow leaves are enough to camouflage him while he comes up with a plan. Ratchet links the scanner to his comm before stowing the tracking screen, following the scout’s lead and slinking backwards into a thicket of vibrant auburn bushes.

_“Is Agent Fowler near our position?”_ Ratchet comms back to base. The voice that responds to him very clearly belongs to Optimus, but the signal is so garbled that the medic can’t make out a single word. So much for being optimistic. The medic crouches in the brush, quickly trying to decide on a plan of action. While avoiding a fight with the Decepticons is preferable, the item attached to the Iacon beacon had the potential to make them ten times as dangerous. He and Bumblebee could fall back, leaving the relic to fall into Megatron’s hands, or stand their ground and hope that only a few vehicon scouts were sent to retrieve it. The engine noise gets louder. Then quieter, then louder again. He’s moving towards the old house before he can second-guess himself. Bumblebee chitters at him over the comms, but he doesn’t need to listen. They’ve both concluded at the same time that there’s an option three: a quick smash-and-grab to take the thing before-

Suddenly, the roar of jet engines disappears completely, Starscream dropping out of the sky and landing elegantly on his pedes. The last Ratchet had heard was that the seeker was still out on his own – one of the few things Optimus could remember from his time as Orion Pax. He’s probably looking for scraps, now that the _Nemesis_ knows he snuck aboard to steal energon. Well, one rogue Decepticon was better than several Megatron-loyal drones, even if it _was_ Starscream.

“Well, what do we have here?” the seeker says as he draws to his full height, wings fluttering in a show of amusement. He managed to land in-between the treeline and the old cabin, catching the medic fully out in the open. Ratchet stops hard and shifts both hands into blades, planting himself firmly between Starscream and Bee’s hiding spot. A trail of twigs and other detritus from his cover marks the medic’s point of exit from the woods.

_“Watching the sun rise.”_ He snarks, seething at the jet and processing several things at once. Starscream probably won’t want to waste precious energon on his plasma weapons, which is why he’s not already being shot at. _But he also hasn’t seen Bumblebee_. With the scanner linked to his comm, Ratchet can sense that the scout has been stealthily creeping closer to the edge of the treeline, circling to flank the jet with one blaster drawn and pointed in the direction of the standoff. He’s approaching Starscream from behind and slightly to the left now, making a ludicrously small amount of noise even though being beyond the clearing places him on a surface covered in dry, crunchy leaves.

“ _Move along,_ Starscream. There’s nothing for you here.”

“Are you sure?” Starscream smirks, taking another haughty step closer to the cabin, obviously the Autobot’s target based on body language alone. Behind his smug façade, the seeker had come to the same conclusion – burning energon to power his weapons was not a good idea. That left him with his two wrist-mounted missiles, which was somewhat of a comforting thought, and his own two servos, which was a much _less_ comforting thought. They were sharp, but not very useful or durable should he actually come to blows with the medic. “ _You’re_ here, are you not? I doubt you just felt like _taking a walk_.” Another measuredly daring step closer. Ratchet tenses, drawing his weapons in and up to guard his torso.

“You don’t want to do this.” he growls. The seeker hesitates, holding his gaze. Bumblebee sneaks ever closer. He needs to _keep talking._ “You and I both know how this ends.” Ratchet talks louder, changing his stance slightly, making as much noise as possible to cover the approaching crunch of leaves.

“Oh, _medic_ ,” Starscream chortles darkly at the perceived bravado, splaying his claws as he takes another bold, _defiant_ step, “I _absolutely_ -”

_Everything goes to hell in an instant._

Bumblebee lunges for the seeker from behind, catching him across the helm with a closed fist and laying a hail of blaster fire as the seeker whirls around, stunned and stumbling out of striking distance, back towards Ratchet. Claws rake against his blades as Starscream lashes out on instinct, pulling himself out of the daze and ducking to the right to avoid Ratchet’s swing.

[]

The sound of a plane disturbing the quiet of the cabin is little more than a brief annoyance to Katherine. It passes overhead briefly before mostly blending back into the rustle of leaves, probably shimmering in the morning breeze. In fact, it doesn’t hold her attention at all, until it grows _unbearably_ loud and then suddenly stops. A screech of metal and a **thud** that she feels in her bones launches Katherine from her thoughts with a surge of adrenaline. She stands, rushing to the window facing the front of the cabin. She can’t see anything outside. No smoke, no fire, but that doesn’t mean that some poor bush-pilot isn’t in a wreck somewhere down the road. Rushing downstairs, she slips on her still-muddy sneakers and throws open the door to go in search of what, by sound alone, _definitely_ has to be some kind of plane crash.

She gets five steps outside the door before realizing that the noise was definitely _not_ a plane crash.

There are giant things. _Giant metal_ _things_ , and they’re _fighting_ on her lawn. Katherine freezes for a second as a silver titan tackles a red-orange one, and a screeching, bleeping yellow blur scrabbles to pull the two apart. She runs back inside the door and slams it shut, locking the deadbolt and throwing her back against the door with a breathless _“Holy shit!”_

_Stupid!_ As if a deadbolt could keep the metal _somethings_ from getting inside. Upstairs? downstairs? She had to _hide_ somewhere. Perhaps she could make a break for the the woods, if she hasn’t been noticed yet? Some panicked little portion of her brain finally decides to move, _upstairs,_ and Katherine bolts up to the loft, turning the light off as she enters.

[]

All three mechs have become one angry, desperate mass, tumbling across the dewy ground and kicking up damp clods of earth and grass. The integrated tracker squeals in Ratchet’s audial as the mad scrap surges closer to the cabin, and a warning blinks across his HUD. His lines run cold as he goes to silence it.

“Bumblebee!” He grunts as he struggles to untangle himself from the snare of limbs.

_.:What? What is it?:._ The scout, currently being flailed at by a heeled leg, chirps a distracted acknowledgement in attention.

**“There’s a life sign in the house!”** He practically _yells_ over the internal comm. He clamps his muddy servos down in an attempt to halt Starscream’s advance toward the structure. But his hold around the seeker’s waist is already slipping, and he lets go, drawing his blades again. **“Second floor. Human. Get them away from here!”**

Bumblebee doesn’t hesitate for a second, taking his opportunity while Starscream is too distracted dodging Ratchet’s relentless strikes to notice. The second-floor window on this side of the cabin is framed too high for him to see inside, and he has no idea how to coax the person _inside_ out. It leaves him with little choice, and he rears back-

[]

Katherine is thankful for the morning light as she shuts off the one in the loft, rushing and rummaging about the room in the late, blue-white dawn. The sound of metal titans fighting is getting closer. The longer she takes gathering necessities, the better an idea hiding in the woods feels.

Two folders are yanked out of the work bag by her bed and set on the desk. The closet door is flung open next, and after a few seconds of sifting through the stuff on the floor, Katherine pulls a second backpack from the clutter, caution-cone orange with stripes of reflective tape to match. She un-zips and re-zips a few pouches, briefly checking that it still contains what she’s looking for. Food. Water. One pocket contains a flashlight and batteries, another a first-aid kit. Satisfied with the supplies, she shoves the folders into the heavy go-bag and slams her laptop closed before the chucking it, power cord and all, in with the rest of her supplies. She snatches her jacket from the bed, slings the pack over one shoulder and turns to leave-

And then the wall at the opposite end of the room bursts inward with an wood-splinterinng _bang._ Katherine drops to her knees and scrambles backwards to avoid the flying debris as something from the outside _punches through the wall_ and sends bits of wood and plaster across the room. A lumpy black _thing_ is in the space where the closet had been just five seconds prior. She’s vaguely aware that she’s screaming.

The black thing unfurls into a _black metal hand_ and pulls back from the improvised window. Cold morning air fills the room as Katherine stares out through the gaping hole. Outside, the brawl rages on. The orange one has the silver one bodily pinned beneath it, but the smaller thing has sharp claws and seems to be trying to _scratch_ it’s way through the other. She jumps when the head(?) of the yellow titan appears in place of the fight, blocking the view through the crumbling wall.

It makes a series of beeping noises at her. Katherine freezes, wondering to herself if this is actually happening, if perhaps she dozed off and this is somehow a bizarre, terrifying dream. But it trills again, head tilting back and forth insistently. The circles in it’s wide eyes cycle narrow as they focus on her.

“What-” She can’t bring herself to form a sentence, opting instead to stare out at the creature as a bone-deep, instinctual terror presses her back to the wall farthest from it. **“What??”** She shouts over the roar of battle. There’s a particularly loud metallic screech outside. The creature steps back from the structure, looks over it’s shoulder, and puts a hand up to the gap, gesturing urgently with the other hand. Come out. _Come out._

The drywall dust hasn’t settled in the air. Katherine pulls herself shakily to her feet, still pressed to the furthest corner of the room, clutching the straps of the caution-orange backpack. **_Come out._** The scraping and yelling is getting louder. There’s a crunch, the sound of something heavy being thrown, an inhuman _howl_ from somewhere beyond the wall. The yellow titan looks frantic now. **_Come out, come-out come-out!_** Something deep in the back of her mind trusts it; something with eyes that kind _can’t_ want to hurt her.

“Okay.” She takes two shuffling steps forward. “Okay!” 

She takes a running start and leaps through the hole in the wall. It’s more than large enough for her to fit through. She skids, wrists-first, into the waiting hand. The world goes dark and the bottom of it jolts beneath her. She blinks in the sudden blackout and realizes that the creature has brought it’s other hand up over her. Bumblebee makes a break for the trees with the woman cupped firmly in his palms.

[]

Ratchet yells, tumbling across the battle-tilled soil as Starscream throws him off, freeing himself from the restraining grapple the medic had only _just_ been able to get him into. He lands, finally, on his back, knocking the air from his vents. The seeker is first to get to his pedes.

“You know what? _Fine!”_ Starscream snarls as he scampers backwards. Ratchet pulls himself back up and is met with the view of a missile being leveled at him from a few dozen feet away.

Bumblebee doesn’t stop sprinting when he hits the treeline. The space between trunks is too narrow to make his alt-mode of any use. About a mile ahead of him is an even thicker patch of trees, hopefully far enough away from the fight to be a reasonably safe cover. Katherine, meanwhile, is politely but urgently protesting her evacuation.

“Hey!” her voice is muffled by the thud of pedes and the crunch of leaves. She starts palming at the inner surface of his servos in order to get his attention. “Hey, Wait! Excuse me! Yellow metal-”

Bumblebee stops on a dime as he reaches the outcropping of vegetation, and the woman in his grip gives a startled yelp as the world screeches to a halt beneath her. He tries not to jostle her any further as he gently sets her on the ground. The human still hits the dirt knees-and-elbows-first, staring at him wide-eyed as he looks over his shoulder towards the fight. “Hey! Hold on, what’s going on!? Why are you-” Bumblebee doesn’t have time to argue. He points at the cluster of trees expressively, a short message of ‘ _hide_ ,’ spinning on his heels as he breaks into a sprint back to the clearing. “Where are you _going?!”_

[]

“If I can’t have it-!“

A blur of yellow and black careens into the seeker, tackling him as he fires his weapon. Starscream misses Ratchet by a country mile, but the old cabin isn’t nearly as lucky. There’s a massive wave of pressure and heat as the missile hits the structure. All three are momentarily stunned as the house is reduced to rubble and flame. It’s just long enough for the rogue ‘Con to wrench himself from Bumblebee’s grip.

**_“NO!”_** Ratchet screams above the roar of destruction as Starscream scrambles back from the Autobots. “What have you done?!” There’s a cold, desperate fury in his voice as he draws his blades again and rounds on the seeker. **“Starscream!”**

“If I can’t have it, you can’t either!” He shrieks with a crazed, panicked grin, taking a running start before shifting into his jet mode and launching into the air. The screech of jet engines overhead fades away in a matter of moments.

“Bumblebee,” Climbing to his pedes in front of the burning cabin, Ratchet pushes his sensors to the limit, searching for the relic and the life signs from before as he circles the cabin wreckage. “ _please_ tell me you got them.” The scout nods with a warble of acknowledgement and makes a beeline through the trees. In less than a minute, Bumblebee skids to a stop in front of the medic, Ratchet only lets himself relax when his internal tracker picks up both signals, cupped securely in Bee’s servos. He can hear the unlucky little thing make a startled noise at the sudden change in speed. _“Primus.”_ Gently, he crouches down to release the human back onto the ground once more. She’s ready to meet the ground this time, hitting the torn-up remains of the driveway feet-first.

“Listen, I’m trying to be _really_ cool about this!” Katherine shakes detritus from her hair and dusts the damp earth from her jeans as she turns to face them. “But I need to know what’s…” She looks up at Bumblebee once more, quickly noticing Ratchet eyeing her skeptically. The new face is forgotten when a flicker of light out of the corner of her eye catches her attention and she looks slightly past him. “going… _on.”_

“That’s… my house.” She says dumbly after a moment, shuffling closer to the now-roaring blaze. It was barely even cabin-shaped anymore. Aside from about half of the back wall, the entire structure had collapsed in on itself, the remaining fuel from the missile acting as starter fluid for what was now little more than a large pile of firewood. Dry, well-seasoned, very flammable firewood. “That’s my house.” It’s more of a question than a statement.

“It... _was_ your house. Yes.” The medic sighs. He squints at her critically, attempting to assess her condition using what he could of his own incompatible scanning technology. She seems intact, if muddy. Bumblebee hums and warbles at her sadly, empathy rolling from his EM field in waves, not that she could feel it like the medic could. “We’re sorry.” He translates.

“You’re _sorry?“_ the woman turns and stares up at him, heartbreak pinching her features. It’s suddenly replaced by confusion, and she tilts her head. “Wait. You’re sorry! You speak English!” It’s like flipping a switch, her grief momentarily forgotten as she pushes her hair from her face with a bewildered smile. “Good. That’s good, I was gonna try charades, next?“ She looks confused again for a moment, looking past the two, then glancing around the property. “Where’d your buddy go?”

“He is not our _buddy.”_ Ratchet snaps, frustration sharpening the edge in his voice. “He’s our _very dangerous enemy._ That-” the medic points to the mess formerly known as a house. “is his work. Not ours.” Satisfied that the woman is unharmed enough to walk and talk, the tension begins to seep from his frame, plating creaking slightly. “We know him. We don’t know you.”

“Oh!” Katherine glances between the two mechs, then down at herself. Still in yesterday’s work clothes, covered in mud, hair _matted_ with twigs and plaster dust. It encroaches over her face and she pushes it back, tucking the errant fluff behind her ears for good measure. “Right! I’m Katherine, Katherine Leigh.” she states, doing her best to look serious, gesturing to herself with a dip of her head. “You can call me Kath, or Kitt, or… really anything? If that’s too hard too hard to say?” She’s babbling, she realizes, and she should really stop, because the metal (robot?) man(??) seems aggravated enough already. “And, you are…?”

“Ratchet.” He returns the polite head-nod, “And that’s Bumblebee. He can understand you just fine.” The speedster waves at her, trilling warmly as the woman waves back, offering a nervous smile and an airy giggle.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you both?” This isn’t happening. She isn’t making polite conversation on her front lawn while her house burns down with two giant robots. “Can I ask, why…?” she waves an arm in the direction of the bonfire. “This? And why were you fighting that _dangerous enemy_ guy _here?”_ The yellow robot, Bumblebee, trills and beeps at Ratchet, who nods and looks back down at the woman.

“In the last few hours, have you come across anything unusual around here?” He asks, “Perhaps a metal container of some sort? Or, a device, something-“ Ratchet pulls the busted scanner from his subspace, stooping slightly so Katherine to be able to inspect it. “like this?”

_“Wh-”_ All she can do is blink owlishly at the device that mech just _pulled out of his body, because apparently that’s a thing too_. “How did you do that?” She reaches out and prods the object gently, as if too sudden a movement might make him disappear it again. Having parsed the new level of _bizarre_ for the current moment, she stares, wide eyed, up at Ratchet. Confusion doesn’t _begin_ to describe the feeling. “I… no? No sir, I’ve been at work since about ten, last night. Why?”

Now, that doesn’t seem right. Ratchet, feeling the instinctual urge to solve the mystery, summons his integrated tracker, the immediate area spiraling to life on the screen. He resolutely ignores the woman’s soft exclamation of awe as he double-checks his findings. Sure enough, on the screen one signal reads ‘Organic - Unregistered‘ and one, overlapping it, depicts the Iacon homing beacon, still slightly corrupted as it was before.

“We know you have the artifact. I can see the signal _on you._ Hand it over.” The medic states flatly, offering his unoccupied servo to accept the device.

“Wait. Wh- _that’s_ what this is about?” her exasperated stare jumps between the two bots as she slings the heavy caution-tape bag off one shoulder, unzipping the largest pocket and beginning to rummage around. “You were fighting over a _stupid hardware error?_ ”

Out of the bag, Katherine produces her beat-up laptop, work USB and charger still dangling from their ports, still functional, despite the raucous events of the morning so far. She props it open on one arm, shifting her posture to support the weight of the backpack as she holds both on the same side of her body. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for _hours,_ what is it?” The screen is impossible to read in the sunlight, but Ratchet can tell without even looking that whatever information the device holds is _one hundred percent_ the signal they’d been following. Which doesn’t make sense at all, because there is nothing special about the device whatsoever. Just a glitched, human-made, _corrupted_ , _stupid, reckless, **unbelievable waste of resources.** _Oh, they’re in _so much trouble._ With a grunted ex-vent of frustration, Ratchet confiscates the device from the woman and subspaces it, pointedly ignoring the exasperated curiosity radiating off of her as he does so.

“A question to be answered later. We need to get going.” The medic huffs, snapping the wrist-mounted screen shut with a metallic click. If Optimus’ scrambled comms were any indication, they won’t be able to contact Omega One from the fiery ruin of Katherine’s cabin. Next to him, Bumblebee nods emphatically, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the edge of the clearing and buzzing in agreement. A large, tamped down portion of vegetation marks the path the bots took in getting to their target. Bee begins to walk back towards the treeline as Ratchet turns, taking a final look around.

“Wait! Do either of you have a phone?” Katherine asks, re-sealing and shouldering the bag. A cold, dark thought reminds her that the contents of it are currently _all she has_. “Nobody has cellphones around here, ‘cause of the telescopes, and…” Woefully out of her depth, she looks between Bee’s retreating form, Ratchet, and the pyre. “Someone probably needs to call the fire department? This’ll spread if it doesn’t get put out.” She crosses her arms, tucking her hands around the straps as she stares numbly into the flames. “Also, my landlord is going to kill me.” Her attempt at levity is hollowed by the defeat in her voice.

“The authorities will already be on their way,” Ratchet explains, as if this should be obvious. “which is why _we_ need to leave.” Rather than follow Bumblebee into the woods, the medic crouches down, holding out a flat palm for the shellshocked woman. “You _included._ Up you go.”

Katherine’s transition into Ratchet’s hands is much smoother than either time being picked up by Bumblebee. No longer being rushed away from danger definitely seems to help. She settles, cross-legged in one steady palm, and his movements are incredibly gentle as he brings his servos to his chest, giving her a surface to lean back on. There are scratches across his chestplates, some shallow and some gouged. She can feel them snag and pull against her jacket once she shifts her pack to her lap. The human slouches forward over it almost protectively, adrenaline finally beginning to dissipate from her frayed nerves.

The walk takes several minutes. Its long enough for Katherine to begin feeling the chill in the morning air fade as the sun warms the treetops overhead. They reach another clearing, substantially smaller, but covered edge to edge in dry, red-orange leaves.

“So, you live out here?” Katherine surveys the circle of open space from her perch in the bot’s hand.

“Please,” Ratchet scoffs, waving his other hand dismissively. “This is our extraction point.”

No sooner than he finishes speaking, a pale green light appears at the far end of the clearing. It swirls outward into a massive vortex, casting an otherworldly glow about the clearing that draws the highlights in harshly and nearly washes out the shadows. Bumblebee must have sent word back to base when he reached the clearing. Katherine can hear the bot beep and whir at them from near the mouth of the portal, and Ratchet nods at the speedster as he disappears through its entrance.

“Where is he going? _”_ She calls up to the mech, fighting to be heard over the crackle of energy and rush of warm air. Ratchet walks over to the portal in succession, and the girl in his hand stares at the rolling green abys as they approach. “Where are _we_ going?!” She asks for what feels like the hundredth time that day. The pack is back over one shoulder in an instant as she draws herself up to her knees, peering out and around the portal as though searching for a soft place to jump.

“Somewhere much safer than our current location,” Ratchet assures, not breaking stride but bringing his other servo forward to deter her from escaping. “Unless you’d prefer to return to your house?” This gets her attention, and she turns to gape up at him. She’s so distracted by the comment that she doesn’t notice they’re already moving through the groundbridge, and when she faces forward again it’s already shrinking closed behind them. She gasps quietly, dropping back to sit on her ankles.

In place of the wooded area that surrounded them seconds prior, Ratchet now stood in a dimly lit tunnel leading to an enormous atrium. It’s populated by Bumblebee, who chirrs warmly at them in greeting, and two other robots that Katherine doesn’t recognize.

“So?” The smaller one is the first to say anything, voice decidedly feminine. She smirks up at Ratchet, eyes shining in amusement. “Who’s your friend?”


End file.
